Dry season in Boghé, Mauritania. Photo: zbili. Used under Creative Commons license

Villagers in Boghé, a community 190 miles south west of the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott, are protesting a proposed $1 billion investment by the Saudi National Prawn Company (NPC) in an aquaculture project in the Senegal river valley that will cover 31,000 hectares.

NPC, which started shrimp farming in 1987 in the sabkha salt marshes on the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia, has grown over the last three decades into a major seafood exporter to Asia and Europe. The company defends its business, noting that it does not use antibiotics or hormones, unlike many of its rivals.

But the sabkha development has been criticized locally in Saudi Arabia, according to Eckart Woertz, the author of “Oil for Food” and senior researcher at Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB).

The complaints by the Boghé villagers are similar to those voiced in Saudi Arabia because Mauritania, which is mostly nomadic, is heavily dependent on access to limited land and water resources. The desert region where Boghé is located is considered one of the poorest parts of the country, which in turn ranks among the poorest in the world.